I don’t recall the last time I was this excited about a new Facebook feature. Facebook has started rolling out Website Custom Audiences to all advertisers across Power Editor, Ads Manager and the ads API.

What Are Website Custom Audiences?

Website Custom Audiences (known by the cool kids as WCA) allow you to create Facebook ads that target users who have previously visited your website.

Why is this awesome?

It’s one more way to reach an incredibly relevant audience. You can target fans organically. You can target your email list or other offline customers through Custom Audiences. And now you can reach people who may not be either an offline customer or a Facebook fan, but who visited your website.

Another very cool benefit is that you can isolate specific visitors within these Website Custom Audiences. So you can focus only on those who visited a specific page or section of your site, or those who visited pages that included a particular keyword in the URL.

The customization potential for such ads is incredible.

How They Are Different From FBX

If you’re an experienced Facebook advertiser, I know what you’re thinking: “But Jon. This sounds awfully familiar. Isn’t this FBX?”

FBX, you’ll recall, is another way to retarget your website visitors with Facebook ads. Yes, they are similar. But they are different. In my opinion, WCA is far better.

With FBX, you have to use an approved third party instead of building the ads through Power Editor or the self-serve ad tool. I’ve been recommending Perfect Audience and AdRoll.

And when you create FBX, it is a specific type of ad. It’s essentially a domain ad that can run either in the News Feed or sidebar. Tight restrictions on what you can do, and advertising isn’t connected to your page.

With Website Custom Audiences, you can create such ads within Power Editor and the self-serve ad tool. So first of all, this is much more convenient as it allows you to keep track of all advertising efforts in one place.

But the biggest advantage for WCA, in my opinion, is that you can create any ad the way you normally would, using the WCA you created as your targeted audience.

In other words, you can reach desktop News Feed, mobile or sidebar. You can promote an organic post or unpublished post. You can promote your page, event or app.

You have no limitations on what you can do. And you can also exclude these Website Custom Audiences for even more powerful targeting.

One final advantage is that we can plausibly assume that WCA will be cheaper than FBX. While FBX is plenty effective and affordable, the third parties need to take their cut. This is no longer necessary.

Facebook says that FBX still has a place, but it would appear to be for the bigger brands that want to set up liquid — or more dynamic — advertising. So this would apply to companies that want to set up dozens or hundreds of ads based on the specific page someone visits.

Still, one has to think that far fewer brands will be using FBX going forward. I know that I have very little use for it now.

How To Create a Website Custom Audience in Power Editor

On the left hand side, click on the “Manage Ads” drop-down and select Audiences.

Then click the “Create Audience” drop-down and select Custom Audience.

Audience Name: Name your WCA something you’ll remember later. Make it descriptive of the audience you are going to target.

Description: Not required, but you can add some more details here if you desire.

Website Traffic: This is where you’ll tell Facebook how to target users based on the specific pages of your site that they visited. By default, Facebook will generate a Website Custom Audience of all website visitors, no matter what page they visited.

But you can also target people who visited specific pages by toggling to “People visiting specific pages.”

You can enter either entire URLs, paths, domains, or keywords found within URLs, paths or domains. The door is clearly wide open for plenty of logic options.

However, the most common type of Website Custom Audience (other than for all visitors) will be for a specific page. For example, if I want to target only people who visited the landing page for my Power Editor training course, I’d use this:

/fb-marketing-advanced-university

If you add more keywords, Facebook will target anyone who visits any page that includes any of the keywords listed.

You can add “AND” logic by clicking the + button…

That way, Facebook will create a Website Custom Audience consisting of anyone who satisfies both rules you create.

If Facebook would target such a person based on the link you provided, you’ll see a green checkmark. Otherwise, it will be a red “X.”

Next, you’ll want to click the “View Remarketing Pixel” if this is the first time you’ve created a Website Custom Audience.

You’ll want to copy this to be used in the next step. Just in case, feel free to paste it to a text document for reference later.

Know that if you can’t access it, you’ll use the same pixel for all future Website Custom Audiences (it only needs to be pasted once). So just create a new WCA to get the pixel.

Duration: By default, Facebook sets this to 30 days. This way, you will be targeting anyone who visited your website within the past 30 days. Obviously, that clock starts ticking the minute your pixel is live.

Facebook allows you to use a duration of up to 180 days. What you use here should be related to the size of your potential audience. If you get really good traffic to the pages you are targeting, consider using shorter time periods to make the targeting more relevant.

Create a Website Custom Audience in Ads Manager

Within Ads Manager, click the “Audiences” link on the left.

Then click the green “Create Audience” button at the top right.

That will bring up this dialog again…

Everything from this point forward will be exactly the same as the steps within Power Editor. Refer to the passage above for details!

Install the Pixel

In the previous step, you copied the remarketing pixel. You’ll need that now!

Go into your website’s CMS. You will want to paste this code before the closing /HEADER tag of your website’s template.

I use WordPress and my site is built on Genesis Framework. As a result, I have a plugin called Genesis Simple Hooks that allows me to easily paste in code to go before that closing tag.

If you aren’t on Genesis, you can surely find another plugin that will do the same thing. OpenHook is one to consider.

Facebook will now start building your audience as visitors to your website are cookied. Facebook will match up those visitors with actual Facebook users.

If you get a lot of traffic, this audience will build quickly. Otherwise, it will take some time. Around four hours after creating my Website Custom Audience, Facebook is showing that I could potentially reach 1,100 people with the WCA that would target all website visitors.

How to Create an Ad Using Website Custom Audiences

Using Website Custom Audiences is a snap. If you’ve ever used Custom Audiences before, you know the drill.

From the Advanced link of Audience during the ad creation process in Power Editor, you’ll be able to enter your Custom Audiences.

You can also exclude any Custom Audience as well, whether WCA or otherwise.

My Ad

I wanted to test this out immediately. So I created a really basic ad to get the attention of anyone who saw it.

The ad received very positive response, but that’s because I was up front about my test. It’ll be interesting to see how people receive it going forward.

It’s a very small sample size, but the ad had a Click-Through Rate of 9.091%.

Some Tips

Just a few things you need to know…

You only need to paste the pixel on your website once. This wasn’t clear to me at first. But the pixel is going to be the same every time. Activate the feature with the first pixel. All future audiences will be created to customize your audience.

You can create up to 200 Website Custom Audiences. Oh, the possibilities!

No Lookalike Audiences yet. I want this! Imagine being able to target users similar to your website visitors. This is only available via the ads API for now.

You can edit your audience, but it’s currently a pain. I can’t edit my audience yet within Power Editor. While I don’t currently have access to creating WCAs within the Ads Manager, I can view and edit them there. This will undoubtedly be fixed in Power Editor soon.

Benefits: More to Come

In this post, I wanted to first focus on what Website Custom Audiences are and how you can create them. But stay tuned. A separate post is coming about how you can use them for your business.

This feature is going to be huge!

What do you think? Are you excited? Let me know in the comments below!

About Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer is a digital marketing consultant with a unique perspective on social media. He was introduced to Facebook in 2007 while with the NBA (back before Pages) and has been using Facebook for business ever since. Stay in touch by liking his Facebook Page (Jon Loomer Digital).

torbahax

Fantastic information as always Jon! As an Ads API partner we are excited to be working this into our software, we believe a lot of small businesses and agencies can benefit from this without having to break the bank. Great work!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Thanks! As you can probably tell, I’m psyched about it. This seems like that missing third dimension of highly relevant targeting. FBX was always there — and I used it to promote products — but being able to throw this into my regular mix of promoting my page and posts is HUGE.

http://beta21.circussocial.com Avtar Ram Singh

Top marks to Jon Loomer yet again for an amazingly informative post. I saw a post on WCA earlier today and it was a newsy article, not giving the in-depth instructions that Jon gave here. I thought Jon would put it up on his website in the next few days – but this popped up today itself.

10/10 Jon.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Thanks Avtar! I never like to write about a feature until I have it and get the chance to try it out. So because of that, I’m usually not first. And that also means I let everyone else be wrong about stuff. ;)

http://thetopfivepercent.com/ Stephen W. Anderson

This is exactly the reason why i come here to learn about changes in the world of Facebook. Thank you.

Angelo Marolla

Very Interesting! In Italy I don’t have already in my Power Editor. Concerning with your ads exemple I think it is very strong. I propose to put something that they have visited before with a particular image. But this is my simple opinion

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Of course, Angelo. I just threw something out there to test it. Going to be doing much more with it in the future!

dennisditmars

Try switching your location to USA…it generally works to get features sooner. Then you might be delivered WCA sooner….I am waiting for it as well….:(

Varin

Hey write to Facebook ads customer support. Once you get in touch with them, they will enable this feature for your account.;)

Sarah Sal

That is powerful, i can split test if women that visited my website convert better than men, or people that like.. VS like another interest convert better. of course to make sense you will need lot of website visitors.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Exactly, Sarah! The more I think about it, the more ideas come to mind.

The nice thing is that you have the duration option so that websites with smaller audiences can simply extend that out a bit more.

Mark Orr

Awesome, thanks Jon. Unfortunately my WCA was temporary. I so hope it appears back very soon as this is going to be huge for our business.

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

Same thing Mark.

http://www.ConnectTheBlocks.com/ Peggy

This is wonderful information Jon – thanks so much for the walk-thru on how to use this new tool!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Thanks Peggy!

Grant Perry

Fantastic stuff. This is the first place I read about it and very in-depth as always. I’ve been waiting a long time for FB to run FBX themselves, which this essentially is under a different name (no doubt to appease the third parties to a degree). I don’t see this option in my power editor yet so I’ll be reaching our to my Rep to see if I can get it asap. I’ll likely have to wait until it reaches me but I’m super excited for this.

Grant Perry

Seems like a great way to exclude converters too (e.g by excluding those who have seen a thankyou page for e-letter signup). That way it’s going to be dynamic rather than having to manually upload a custom audience regularly (although I’d probably still do both).

Lookalike’s will be awesome too…I hope they roll that out soon.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

I hadn’t thought of this, Grant, great idea! The way I’d use it would be to exclude the converters both ways: 1) via saved Custom Audience and 2) via Website Custom Audience. The reason for this is that — particularly for older products — I’ll want to promote something that has been around longer than the duration of the audience, so I’ll want to catch the old converters as well.

Grant Perry

Agreed. You can also target those converters too of course (to a paid product in this example) just as you can do now with custom audiences. Lots of fantastic opportunities. Can’t wait to get it in my hands!

Mare

Great post. Love the “how-to” approach instead of general advice.

Have a question though. How does the WCA update? In real time?

This is how I imagine the process (correct me, if I’m wrong)

1. You paste the pixel fb gives you to your website

2. Facebook tracks every user that comes to your website with a cookie

3. If this person has a fb profile, Facebook ads them to the WCA list

.. but this is an ongoing process.

Question: does facebook constantly update your WCA list OR do you have to create a new list every time in order to include the visitors that came to your site in the time between when you created your previous list and now?

And if the second part is true, would it not make more sense to install the pixel first and then wait, say a month (or week- depending on your website traffic) before actually creating the WCA? And then create an updated WCA after another month(week)?

Hope I did not overcomplicate this and you understand what I mean.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

It’s updated dynamically.

Mare

Thank god :) Thanks Jon

Justin

And how about creating an audience of buyers so you can market relevant products to them immediately after they purchase from you. It’s easier to get money out of a wallet that’s not in a pocket…

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

That’s exactly how you can use this. Target those who visited the specific success page following a purchase.

http://www.ianbrodie.com/ Ian Brodie

Thinking about it, this has a huge advantage over retargeting with FBX in that respect. Because it’s integrated fully with other FB audiences I can exclude an uploaded custom audience of existing subscribers/buyers. With FBX I can’t.

Chris Hoffman

I’ve been using a remarketing campaign that excludes converters on Google AdWords for some time and it’s extremely effective. SO excited that this feature will be available on Facebook soon as well.

Grant Perry

Yeah, likewise I exclude converters from most of my AdWords campaigns and have been long awaiting the FB equivalent.

Rob Mobberley

Jon – really looking forward to this and comparing to Perfect Audience. Unfortunately I am not seeing it at the moment – fingers crossed it won’t be long. Keep up the great work. Cheers.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Crazy thing is that I no longer have it. However, I had it long enough to create a couple of audiences, so I can still use it!

Jason Mann

I had it long enough to attempt a campaign. It kept hanging up on me when I went to create the audience. Refreshed Power Editor and it was gone.

Scott Linklater

Awesome feature!

The PMD I work with on projects have some advanced features of this that have blown my mind! There is an endless amount of possibilities!

Jon, what do you see this doing to Perfect Audience and Adroll? Is it a fatal blow? A big hit? Or a minor bump in a long road for them?

Cheers

Scott

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Facebook claims there’s still a place for AdRoll and Perfect Audience, but I’ve gotta think that this replaces those two services for the vast majority of advertisers. It will for me.

Brad Flora

Hi, Jon! This is Brad from Perfect Audience. The vast majority of advertisers retarget across more than just Facebook and so need a way to frequency cap across all channels, track conversion across all channels, and optimize performance across all channels. Facebook’s new retargeting solution is a great way to get started with retargeting, but once advertisers are ready to make a retargeting a core part of their marketing, they’re going to want a cross-channel solution that brings together display, social, and other emerging formats.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Understood, Brad! Website retargeting away from Facebook is still an interesting concept. And if you’re doing Adwords, for example, you should also be doing that. My focus just isn’t there at this point.

Amitai

I don’t see it in my Power Editor. is it a feature which is beeing roled out gradually?

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

It is, Amitai.

Moe Khodairy

Me too!

PhillipaKiripatea

Awesome stuff! Can’t wait to play with this feature.

Larry T

I’m relatively new to Facebook so I may be missing the importance of WCA.
The way I see it, if a person had visited my website, they ALREADY saw my lead magnets.

They already saw MULTIPLE ads, and articles designed to engage them and capture their contact info or make a sale.

So what is the point of spending money on a facebook ad to have them see it again?

Especially on a facebook ad with such limited space that it is face less compelling than what they already saw on the website.

Larry T

I should add… I thought the point of a facebook ad was to GET them TO my WEBSITE.

Once at there, it’s the website’s job (using multiple modalities) to convert the visitor into a subscriber or a customer.

If the website failed to do that, why PAY to bring that visitor back again?

Jason Mann

Why PAY to bring a visitor back again? First not everyone joins your list, buys your product, or reads your content. The majority of visitors hit your site and leave after one article or maybe half an article. Doesn’t matter how great your stuff is, this is, and always will be the case.

More to the point retargeting the “ones that got away” you bring them back to your site.

It’s just one more tool in your marketing toolbox. Like I said, the majority of people that visit your site don’t take action on your lead magnets, content, or sales offers.

dennisditmars

Think ” Retargeting ” your message(s) to your custom audiences @1/20th the original cost ( organic or paid ). Most persons don’t convert to an offer on the 1st impression. Now you have their ” pixel ” contact info. to reach to them again ( in addition to an email if they Opted IN )…. Or you could send them to new pgs. on different URLs.

Kenneth

Just checked and I don’t have this feature yet :( Looks like we have to wait again in Australia. Looks awesome but, can’t wait to use it!

dennisditmars

Try switching your location to USA…it generally works to get features sooner.

Vernon Wanner

Super informative!

http://unbounce.com Tia K

Way to be on it Jon! Your detailed explanations are some of the most valuable I’ve found online for new features like these. It can always be a bit of a gamble at first to approach paid advertising on any platform, but being able to see a full process helps give people confidence to at least try. Being able to retarget so easily opens up a lot of possibilities. Thanks for the review!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Thanks for the kind words, Tia! Happy you found it helpful.

http://tomlambert.com/ Tom Lambert

Can’t wait for this! Jon – do you know if this is cookie based or if Facebook adds them to the audience only if they’re already logged in?

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Cookie based, Tom.

http://naturessima.pt/ Alexandra

Perfect post, Just one question do I need to have conversion-tracking pixel installed on my site to be able to use it?

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

You don’t, Alexandra. I actually heard a rumor that the two will soon be merged.

http://www.theclothingbroker.com/ Valerie

Two things: 1- Do you know if facebook will introduce frequency capping? 2- You actually don’t need Genesis Simple Hooks, you can just go into Theme Settings and Header and Footer Scripts.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

1 – I keep hearing this. I hope so!
2 – Thanks for the tip!

http://www.digitalks.me/ Mohit Jain

Jon great post. Do you know if this is going to work even with a small numbers of users? With Perfect Audience we need to wait for at least 100 visits but sometimes even targeting a smaller number can be effective and can bring quick conversions.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Mine was working while the list was building in the few hundreds.

http://www.postplanner.com/ Scott Ayres

Nice explanation of how to set these up.

http://thetopfivepercent.com/ Stephen W. Anderson

Usually I am not a big fan of the big guys developing their own versions of tools that are already working, unless they prove to be simpler to use and get results from than using a set of tools that I have assembled from various sources.

Thank you Jon for this in depth explanation about this. I don’t have it yet, but hey, Christmas is coming and I know what I am looking for in my Facebook stocking.

Jordan Hansen

Hi Jon, Thanks for the GREAT info!! (I don’t say this much) I don’t see this feature available in my power editor. Do I need to download a new version or will it become available soon???

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

It’s a roll-out, Jordan, so it could be a while!

eggron

Any reason why I wouldn’t be able to see WCA option in my Power Editor? Thanks.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Many people aren’t seeing it. It’s a roll-out.

Pamela Crawford

Fantastic

Emeric

I’m putting this into place right now :-)

Emeric

Too bad, not available yet in my version of power editor. I’ll have to wait!

Alexey

We have the same problem with this updates too.You are from USA?

Emeric

Nope, from France

http://rodrigo.mp Rodrigo DB

But If I want to tag visitors for two different websites do I have to generate two different pixels?

Pankaj

Dear Rodrigo, have you got the solution/answer to your problem? If I am managing 2 websites, is the pixel code different for both of them?

Guest

Hey Jon, great article. I was just listening to your webinar this afternoon and had a question I may have missed you answering. I’m somewhat confused how the audiences are complied with the same code. Say I place the piece of code on my pricing page and again on my ebook page. Will it automatically generate two audiences? Or do I need to create multiple WCAs to place them on multiple places within my site?

Thanks!

Guest

Sorry, another quick confusion. If I’ve placed multiple pixels (I’m thinking of this like the conversion tracking pixel, by the way) on multiple pages, will my website traffic trigger the first (say, on the landing page) and then also trigger the second (on the pricing page, for instance)? Won’t I have the same Facebook user multiple times in my two WCAs? Thanks again.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Both pixels will trigger, but I’ve heard that Facebook will eventually merge the two.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Hey, James! The code isn’t placed on a particular page, it’s placed before the closing BODY tag in your site’s template so that it will appear on every page. Then you create Custom Audiences to filter out who is targeted based on key word in the URL.

http://www.antoniocalero.com/ Antonio Calero

As usual, Facebook rolls out these features in a funny – and somehow discriminating – way. I do not have access to this feature myself, but some friends – who are not FB marketers – do.

I’ve been testing it on their accounts and it’s such a great feature… What a pity it’s of no use for them. If only I could have it myself…

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

I had it, but I don’t have it now. At least I created some audiences before it went away!

Does anyone know how to speed the process up for getting it back?
Thanks!

Eran Malloch

Hi Jon. Well, I think I got it, but it’s different to what your screenshots show.

In my case, once I click on Create Audience (in Power Editor), there are only 2 options (Save Targeted Group & Custom Audience). If I select Custom Audience, it pops up a new “Create Audience” dialog box, and option 4 is “Custom Audience from your Website.”

When I click that, it pops up a check box to accept the T&Cs, followed by the actual ‘create your custom audience’ box.

I have attached screenshots to demonstrate, in case others are seeing this as well.

My main question is: How do I create a filter that includes everyone who has visited my website EXCEPT those who have reached my thankyou page (i.e. they converted to a lead)?

I tried your “/” trick, but not sure if that is correct. Also attached is a screenshot of the rule inside the custom audience window. Hopefully that will help.

Thanks Jon. BTW, great article and a cool new feature. Might be time to ditch adroll, methinks ;-)

Eran

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Yep. Since I wrote this, Facebook has integrated the Create Audience design from Ads Manager.

Kirien

Ahhh — I was waiting for you to do a post on this, and so glad that you did! Can’t wait to get experimenting. Thanks for sharing.

EtienneJ

This is AWESOME!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Agreed!

Jayne Day

Wow. This is great news. I was disappointed that I didn’t have it in Power Editor yet however, I just found it in my Ads Manager.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

NICE! You only need it in one place.

Mark H

Where in Ads Manager do you see it Jayne? In the Audiences column, I still see the old one. Power Editor still nada. :(

Ben

Hi Jon,

Our Power Editor doesn’t have the feature available, do you know when it will be rolled out in full?

Thanks!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Two month roll-out.

http://yadayadamarketing.com laurabetterly

Noticed this yesterday and started to implement–again only issue is you must get the code when it’s shown and can’t seem to get after you create the audience. Thanks :-)

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Yes, but every single Website Custom Audience you create uses the same code. So you could also just create a new audience!

http://yadayadamarketing.com laurabetterly

Didn’t know that :-) Awesome then…

jerry v

Now you can email the code to yourself for backup etc.

Dasean Barnes

HA! Saw your AD on facebook! you always Come with the results man! I like that!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

BOOM!

eggron

Hi John. First, you rock. Second — question on pixels, since I don’t want to create a pixel conflict. I already use a standard FB pixel for my site — what should I do about this new pixel for the WCAs? Should I replace the old one with this new one? The two pixels’ code are quite similar as well. Any advice you have on this would be great, since I know I’m not the only one wondering, and you are the go-to guy.

eggron

Just to clarify — by ‘replace’ I meant literally in the code base…so, taking out the old pixel code and putting the new one in its place. Avoiding pixel conflicts and mis/under-reporting is my goal.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Which other pixel are you referring to?

eggron

Hi Jon, thanks for the reply. Here’s my situation — I already use a FB pixel for ad optimization purposes. The process of setting up WCA brings me to a point where FB is giving me another pixel — so, a new one. Should I…(1) replace the old pixel with the new WCA pixel in my code base; or (2) insert this 2nd pixel along with the original pixel, so both pixel codes would be in the code base? Hope this makes sense.

Very informative post, thanks Jon. I just tried to create audience but I didn’t see “Website Custom Audience” under the create audience dropdown. Do you have any idea why and do I have to add the code to all pages of my website? Thanks!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

It’s a roll-out, but it looks like this UI also changed. Click on Custom Audience within that drop-down, and it may be there.

Rom

same problem for me. I can’t see the Website Custom Audience button. :( Why ?

http://www.limerick2030.com/ Patricia Sarsfield

Nice. Very nice. Excellent instructions.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Thanks!

Brandon Houston

Brilliant. Lookalike will be a Godsend. Good hustle on this Jon.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Thanks, Brandon! Agreed, Lookalike for this will be awesome. Especially combined with the Lookalike Audience for your email list. Always need to search out highly relevant people you are not currently connected to.

Anthony

WOW great info thanks Jon…I’m trying to figure out how I can do this to affiliate offers since I can’t drop the pixel on their page is it possible to do this without dropping the pixel on the affiliate offer’s page?

Richard

Hi Jon, its my first visit to your blog and I must say what a great share this is. A frighteningly simple yet powerful way of building a targeted ad list. I love the concise to the point screenshots as well. Have bookmarked your page and will be following closely. Great content as I am just getting into facebook ads. Thanks

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Welcome, Richard!

Peter Štrbo

Great news Jon, you´re the best! But i´m wondering when it will be available also in Middle Europe. Awesome feature i guess. How can i get update my power editor right now? :)

http://www.plronestop.com Reba Collins

Wow, such great information! Thanks! I don’t have it in my power editor or ad manager but will be on the lookout, can’t wait to set this up.

http://www.actionmobilegames.com James Petty

Jon question on the part you said that you only need to put the pixel on your website once. I created a website pixel for all my pages and put it on the site. I then wanted to create an audience for only people that have visited the ‘get a quote’ page. When I created this audience within power editor the script was different.

Can you elaborate a bit on this point? Seems to me at the least I need to put this pixel on that page?

http://www.actionmobilegames.com James Petty

Update on this… Turns out the power editor can become bugged if you manage multiple accounts. I created a remarketing pixel for the site http://www.austinsmaidservice.com then created another remarketing pixel for http:www.actionmobilegames.com and everything seemed fine. Well when I went back to try and create another remarketing audience for customers that have submitted a quote on the maid site, the power editor wouldn’t recognize I was trying to do that and kept putting the audience under the action mobile site. Downloading to refresh wouldn’t work. I had to completely close out my editor window and reload it to get it to recognize the proper account. Hopefully this might help those of you who have multiple accounts you manage.

Nancy Verbrugghe

Interesting, but I don’t have it in Power Editor :-( (Belgium)…

http://kanban.se Gustav Bergman

Same here in Sweden. No Website Custom audience yet. Wonder when it will come to Europe?

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

Jon I was so pumped up after seeing your video and reading this post. I then logged into Power editor and set up my first WCA. I then went back today to do a training to show some of my peeps how to do the same and WCA was gone? I was about to take it personal until I came back here to dig through all of the comments. Facebook always has bugs with their new roll-outs but they do come through big time. Thank you for being you Jon.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

At least you were able to set up an audience, Domonic! I’m thankful I was able to set up a couple. Annoyed it was taken away, but at least we can still benefit!

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

I would like to think that they are just working through the kinks not doing the take away:( Glad I was not doing a live webinar that would have been a real bummer.

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

It looks like facebook moved on this to fast. I was wondering why there was no site approval process. Give the guy’s a couple of weeks and I pray we are good to go.

Ahmed ElSharkawy

Is this working only in Some Countries or for some accounts because it is not working for my Account created in Egypt

CITE / John

I manage a few websites for this one company. Could I use the same pixel on different sites? Or how do I create a new pixel for the other site?

http://www.RandySalameh.com/ RandySalameh

Good read…

Bartek

Don’t have option: “website custom audience” in my Power Editor ;/

Del Millers

Don’t see this in power editor…any ideas why? I only have the first two options and I’m in the US.

SuperSmartHealth

Jon, awesome post, as usual. But also as usual Facebook has changed the interface again! Have you done any posts on exactly how to add webpages or terms from your urls to filter audiences (in a way that is not too technical)? That would be brilliant!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Yep. I’m working on an edit, but it’s a pretty drastic change!

As far as the terms/filtering, that’s part of my issue right now. Since Facebook hasn’t released any documentation (that I know of), I’m struggling with this. The filtering I’m applying that I assume should work isn’t. So I don’t know if it’s a bug or if I’m doing it wrong.

Marlene Davis McNaughton

Jon, I don’t have access to the CMS (we have a franchise site) can I just post the code on each page?

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Eh… I don’t think so. You really need access to the backend of that site.

Hoang

Why in my facebook “Website Custom Audiences” don’t show ? please

Amirol Asraf

Me too. How to solve it?

Federico E. Gómez

Me too! I think that maybe its going to be available in a few days…

Kim Henning Olsen

Yes! Same here. Custom Audience from website dont work here either. So is probably a country based function. Or anyone have some information on this ?

oDesk

I don’t have the “Custom Audiences from website” either, although I’ve ran a lot of campaign means a lot of money spent in Facebook

Hoang

i come from VietNam

CEthridge

Love this post, hate this post. Taunt me with a feature I do not have . . . :(

Giovanni Puglisi

It looks like this hasn’t been rolled out to my page yet! Any ideas why?

http://idealsoftware.co.za/ Ian Said

Doesn’t appear to be much difference between creating a WCA in Power Editor vs Ads Manager. Why would you use the one over the other? Does the one have more benefits / feature?
Thanks Jon.
Ian

http://www.BlitzMetrics.com Dennis Yu

Lookalikes on WCA are currently only available via the Ads API, by the way. Jon, if you got access via Power Editor, let me know!

Oliver Cheah

What if the computer/browser is shared between users? How would you know which user who visited your website to choose to retarget?

I’m sure the answer is somewhere in all of these comments, but got tired of looking!

I’m in the US and wanting to use this feature, but the option for choosing my website to target my custom audience isn’t showing up. Will everyone have this feature at some point?

Guest

Hey everyone, anyone know why I simply don’t have the option under audience to create a custom audience from your website? I’ve reloaded and all… thanks in advance

Mike

Great News Jon! I’m not sure about the duration, If I setting 30 days, is this the time users will show my ads? If I only need show my ads for 5 days What settinG Do I need to Do?

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

It’s the duration of how recently the user visited your website. Ad duration is controlled from the campaign.

BJ

Do you need to create the audience and targetting using your own personal facebook account? If I was going to do this for a customer, how do I do it in a way that my facebook profile remains completely anonymous to them?

Arno

To bad that we don’t have this feature yet. Can’t wait to try this out!

localleadscoach

When using the new Website Custom Audiences Facebook seems to only give me 1 WCA pixel code. Can I use this on multiple websites?

Stuti

Thanks Jon! :) Very informative and useful! Unfortunately, I don’t see that option yet in Power Editor or Ads Manager :( Hoping to get it soon!!

Selena Thurbon

Thanks again Jon, got this implemented today as well!! The instructions where great and easy to use – the gold nugget of information for me was the plug-in for my Genesis Theme! My custom audience is now up and slowly growing – so exciting!!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Love it, Selena!

Carl Reed

I was so stoked to use this new feature for one of my clients campaigns, spent the last 90 minutes pulling my hair out trying to find it but it’s just not in my account! I REALLY hope they’re just fixing bugs because this is too cool, remarketing is awesome for conversions. Thanks for the info Jon!

http://www.sleepinglikealog.com/ Sean Fry

Is this feature gone or something?

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

Jon have you had people complain that the website custom audience is gone from their editors after being there? I thought it was there for everyone.

http://www.jakmy.cz Tom

Hello Jon, thank you for interesting article.

In my account the option “CWA” rolled out about 20 days ago, so I pasted my pixel code on my website. Now, after 20 days, I am trying to create audience, but the result shows me only <=20 people (website had much more traffic over past 20 days). Do you have any opinion where could be the problem?

Can anyone answer these questions?…
– I have two related websites. I assume I post the same pixel on both?
– If I post the pixel on my two blog templates (bloodspot), can I create custom audiences from them?
– My website is basic html, not a cms. If I post the pixel on the index page, will I pick up visitors to subordinate pages?

I’m anxious to try this.

Jim Oberst

Why am I getting the warning “finish setting up your pixel code” even after I’ve installed it on my websites? Any thoughts?

Guest

Mine was also missing, and just appeared today. Hang in there and keep checking.

Jennifer Gonzalez-Gent

Hi Jon! Love your website- its really helped me to learn so much (as a total newbie to all of this social media marketing i have much to learn lol) but i had a quick question. I set up my WCA, inserted the code, and the audiences are starting to populate but in really small amounts. For instance, in the one i have designated to all website visitors there are only 70 people in it but I know that number should be much much higher. Actually all of the audience categories i made have really low numbers that cannot possibly be correct. Any ideas as to why that might be happening?

Adam Landry

Jon – amazing stuff as always. You are the go-to-resource for all things Facebook Advertising. Thanks for all you do. I have a random question, I was hoping you could answer: What are you using to create the “click to tweet” box at the top of the Blog post? I think that is one of the best ways I’ve seen someone layer in amplification without burdening the reader. Is it an app widget, plug-in? Thanks for any help you can provide.

Adam Landry

Jon – I work for a franchise system and each franchise location has their “own” website that is technically a subdomain of the main site. I am getting a little confused on how to set up the WCA specifically for the subdomain that i want to track (my franchise location). In addition to wanting to track all visits to the “site,” I would also like to track visitors to the “pay-off” pages of the subdomain, but I can’t seem to configure the parameters in a way that works. If you can lend any advice on the subdomain roadblock, I am pretty sure I can figure out the rest. Thanks for all the amazing content.

I tried it, but then it is only showing 20 ppl in my audience (but in fact i should have more). Anything i have done wrong here?

Guest

Heyy. also my Facebook account don’t show website custom audiences…Pl help for this..Thanks

http://walson.bawahotels.com cheap rates hotel

Heyy. also my
Facebook account don’t show website custom audiences…Pl help for
this..Thanks

Michael Thell

Hi Jon. I’m just starting up some test on my own. Have been reading alot on your site. But i got, maybe a dumb question, that you or any one else may know. Our company has 3 FB pages (different products/services). As i understand i need 3 pixels? From one and each of these fb pages. Can you see any problem with that?

Michael Thell

I think i got the answer by my self :)

http://www.renaudgagne.com Renaud Gagne

BOOM! Woah , this is serious badassery. Thank you so much and I am setting this up right now.

http://oeuvre.in/ Bhaskar Bharti

Good stuff. But can you explain on sharing the custom audiences across accounts or may be creating common WCA under a parent account.

Renato

Great tutorial, Jon. Quick question: is there a way to exclude people from WCAs that already viewed on of my ads? Thanks!

http://www.FastStartFormula.com/ Dan Kelly

General Question about WCA’s: What if you want/need more than 200 custom audiences – like if you ran a site with content about 500+ different celebrities… and you wanted to run ads targeting each celebrity? Is there a way around the limit that doesn’t break Facebook’s Terms of Service? (Thanks, Jon. You Rock!)

John Andrew Markham

So once I formed the WCA and created my first ad. The target audience was a small number of people. Is the pixel retroactive? Did it pick up the last 30 days of visitors? or am I waiting for 30 days to have an accurate 30 day audience? I have my ad continuing to run, will its target audience be continually changing based on web traffic to my website?

Shawn Snyder

As of the last 24 hours or so, every time I try using a custom audience, the ad won’t get approved. No matter the ad, nor with different audiences. If I remove the targeting of the audience, the same ads will be approved. I don’t understand what’s going on??

Brad Lazarus

Anyone have any suggestions of wordpress plugins that can be used to add the WCA pixel to a wordpress site? (I don’t use Thesis)

Henry

Jon,

Could you perhaps advise as to where to find templates for Facebook compliant “Disclaimer” and “Privacy Policy” pages for my website as per the Website Custom Audience (WCA) TOS?

Many thanks,
Henry

Joseph Quinn

I Had the same problem and I had to send a support ticket to Facebook explaining to them that i wanted to create a custom audience for my website and a few days later that option appeared. I have a WordPress plugin that lets me create these audiences for any affiliate product that I am promoting and I don’t even have to install any code on the page of the product that i am promoting. So now I can create an audience based on who visits my affiliate links. This can only increase my ROI. And what’s great about it, is I don’t even have to promote the same product that the visitors landed on in the first place. I could promote a similar product and still expect to generate some sales. This is exciting! I have a campaign up and running now, building out that audience

Jim Henheffer

Hey Jon, if you are using WCA instead of third party FBX would you need to insert another pixel to be able to re-target on Google’s display network? Would you continue to use Adroll or Perfect Audience to target this and use WCA’s for the Facebook component? Thanks!

Michael

Think I may be confusing myself with the Facebook Pixel. I manage many different websites for different companies and now you have an option of “All Website Vistors” which you actually had it before by not just entering a url or domain but the pixel never changes for any audience.

Since it it the same pixel installed on 14 different domains if you have all website visitors checked and do not enter a domain want it add a person to each of the 14 audiences every-time someone visits any of the sites.

I have the pixel on a site that gets 1000 uniques a day and the pixel on a site that gets 10 uniques a day want each audience grow at 1000 a day since it is the same pixel just firing on different sites.

Susan Wilcox

Hi Jon, Just wondering if you have any experiencing with inserting a custom audience pixel into an Amazon product page. I’d like to capture the customers who visit our product page on Amazon.

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

Hey @susan_wilcox:disqus I just started using this cool simple web app to add WCA pixel to any web page. I use it to promote some of my own books on Amazon. It works great and is a real no brainier. http://greenlbl.com/fbrt enjoy

John McGarry

Jon, question, I have created a custom audience pixel for web site visitors. I have not yet installed it on the site. In ads manager the audience is now listed with my other audiences and I have the option to either edit , delete or view pixel details. If I select view pixel details it is telling me how many pixel events has taken place over the last 24 hours and the last 7 days. I assume this means the amount of times the pixel would have fired if it was installed. How can it calculate this. When setting up the pixel it asks for no domain as I wanted to track all visitors. Also the pixel has not been installed anywhere !!

Justin

With WCA is it possible to target people who have previously downloaded an app?

Paolo

Hi Jon, great tutorial… do we need to install it before the closing tag? In my power editor, i created 3 CA. The pixel is always the same… is this normal? Thanks!

Nicola Mattina

Hi Jon,

thanks for this step by step tutorial. I would like to add that now you can automatically synchronize a MailChimp list with a Facebook custom audience thanks to Stamplay. Here you can find the details:

I really would like to read your opinion about it. How can we improve this hack and make it more useful?

Thanks
Nicola Mattina
Co-founder of Stamplay

Guest

What if I represent multiple clients and want to add a pixel to each of their sites? Why is the tracking pixel the same? I don’t understand how it would work with multiple websites.

Colin Wills Gibson

Hi Jon,

Firstly great blog- learnt many skills through your posts! Before I start setting this all up, as it sounds really exciting- is this available in the UK?

Kris

Quick question: can I use the 1 Facebook remarketing pixel (for WCA) on mulitple websites? For example if I manage multiple FB pages that each page have different website?

Barry Paul Price

Exciting, but I’m not clear on where I have to go paste the script.. guess I’ll figure it out! I use Optimize Press. Maybe there’s a FAQ for that in OP support. Thanks James1

http://dom4biz.com Domonic Mongello

@barry_paul_price:disqus In Optimizepress go to theme options and there is an area to paste tracking scripts..

Marco Peters

I don’t know what to think of the Custom Audience feature…. We tried to match a couple of our Email lists and we always got numbers like 600,400, 1500 but never real numbers like 635, 478, 1524. I’ve got the feeling that Facebook is faking these numbers and the number of actual matches is much lower than that. Facebook just adds a number of other profiles, not related to the actual email list, in order to provide bigger numbers. What is your experience?

Nelson

What do you think about Custom Audience v.s. FBX? Our re-targeting merchant was not to happy when we switched and keeps sending long emails about why FBX is better, specifically their ability to show products the customer viewed as the picture to the ads.

JC

So I have a question: Underneath the “Custom Audience” area when you’re actually creating the ad are the other parameters for targeting the ad, including language, location, etc. Are you able to use these parameters within your Website Custom Audience? For example, within my Website Custom Audience, I want to create an ad for my website visitors located in New York, and another for those located in California…

Sarah Kerrigan

Very useful read. I was just wondering how can you use remarketing ads on multiple websites? Facebook only seem to give you the option to create one pixel per account?

Alysca

Hey Jon, thanks for the fantastic post. I was just wondering – once you’ve created the custom audience and added the pixel to your website, how long should it take until you start seeing people added to the audience? For instance I installed the pixel about 3 days ago and since then I know that I’ve had over 150 visitors to the site, but my audience is still showing zero. Has anyone else had this problem?

Clare

My WCA lists became smaller since the last time I checked. How’s that possible?

Ang

But how much did it cost you?

http://www.botoskin.com.br Felipe

Hello Jon, greate site,
I have a question regarding WCA, I’m changing to a new facebook account and I need to share the old WCA that is creted in the old account of mine, how can I do that? Thanks!

http://www.thinkfrogmarketing.co.uk Louise

Hi Jon. I manage several accounts and it looks like the Power Editor isn’t allowing me to manage multiple accounts? Do you offer 1 on 1 training? Thanks Louise

Lazo Freeman

John, social lead freak was used on my site now I get this error message,

You can’t edit the details of this audience because it was created by someone else and shared with you. You can only edit audiences you’ve created.

what do you suggest I do?

Michelle Curren

Hi Jon, thanks for the great post! Do you happen to know how often Facebook is updating these audiences?

How much time facebook will take to find out the weather we installed the pixel or not. I have trying for http://commonstupidman.com

heidimassey

Thanks for all of the great content on Facebook ads. Really a go-to source for my work.

One suggestion to folks. Google Tag Manager makes installing pixels on sites so much easier, especially if you aren’t a techie/developer type. You insert the code into a “container” and you don’t have to go into the back end of your site. It is also great when you hire advertisers because then they don’t need access to the back end of your site. You or they can just insert the tag via tag manager. I believe you have to use Google Analytics to use Tag Manager…but that is the analytics tool most small businesses probably should be using. For larger businesses, there are probably similar tools or they have IT teams that manage all of this for them.

Vanessa

Major difference between FBX and WCA is that WCA is user-based (FB data) and FBX is only cookie/browser based. WCA also allows for cross device targeting and layered FB targeting on top. And is now dynamic with the introduction of Dynamic Product Ads. :)